Houston officials on Monday extended the city’s disaster declaration as the region continues to recover one week after Hurricane Beryl knocked out power for millions.
After a nearly 15-minute-long meeting Monday afternoon, Houston City Council voted unanimously to extend the disaster declaration until July 2025. According to the city, this will help clear the way for officials to continue focusing on storm recovery efforts, allowing the city to issue “emergency purchase orders, and other city business items that may be necessary during a disaster,” according to Brent Taylor, a spokesman with the Houston Office of Emergency Management.
The declaration will also allow more federal resources to make their way into the region.
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More than 200,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity as of Monday afternoon – a week after the storm hit the region and caused at least 13 deaths along with widespread flooding and power outages.
Alin Boswell, a resident of Oak Forest in northwest Houston, is among the thousands who were still without power seven days after the storm. During Monday’s city council meeting, Boswell expressed his frustrations with CenterPoint’s lack of communication throughout the restoration process.
Boswell aimed at the company’s restoration map, which has been criticized for not providing enough information for those who are still in the dark.
“This is by far the most useless piece of information that has ever been created by a business,” Boswell said. “If we knew we were at the bottom, we can make the appropriate accommodations. Having no transparency at all leaves us with little to nothing to go off.”
In response, Whitmire said Boswell’s anger was “justified,” and likely represented the frustrations of the many Houstonians who’ve been without power for days. The mayor said, just as he had repeated in the wake of the storm, that CenterPoint would “be held accountable.”
“There’ll be some drastic, drastic measures,” Whitmire said. “People would just like transparency, and to know what they can expect.”
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